Latin America calls for new international drugs policy

The regulation of drugs has joined climate change, terrorism and the financial system as a policy area which can only be dealt with through international institutions. States are notoriously inept when it comes to working together to solve these international problems. They tend to focus on their own domestic advantage, as they should, rather than look at the bigger picture. However, these problems are not going to go away and since states remain concerned with the goings on within their own borders the responsibility falls to international institutions to pick up where states leave off.

Today the Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina called for a new international agreement on the trafficking and sale of illegal drugs. Speaking at a summit in Cartagena, Colombia, the former intelligence officer turned president, made the case that international policy on the matter ought to favour greater liberalisation and regulation. He stated that:

“”Our proposal as the Guatemalan government is to abandon any ideological consideration regarding drug policy (whether prohibition or liberalisation) and to foster a global intergovernmental dialogue based on a realistic approach to drug regulation. Drug consumption, production and trafficking should be subject to global regulations, which means that drug consumption and production should be legalised, but within certain limits and conditions.”

Whether it is greater or fewer regulations that are being discussed governments ought to foster a policy which promotes the involvement of international institutions. Without these they will be left with a fractured and broken set of domestic rules which cease at the borders of the state.